Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200–450 CE by Éric Rebillard (review)

Éric Rebillard tests Rogers Brubaker’s theory of “internal plurality”: that individuals hold multiple identities together in a non-hierarchical fashion so that contrasting identities might be activated according to circumstances. Specifically, he attempts to demonstrate that in Roman Africa Christians judged that their religious commitment was irrelevant in some situations—not only paying imperial taxes but participating in the state-sponsored cult. Some years before the emergence of the theoretical framework Rebillard considers, John Helgeland provided an excellent example of its practice in what he took to be the attitude of Christian soldiers who endured the full twenty years of service in a Roman legion: “Probably they modeled their Christianity along the lines of Roman polytheism—Mars is for victory, spring nymphs are for fresh water, Jupiter Dolichenus is for weapons that do not break in combat, and Christ is for when your weapon does break and you die” (Christians and the Military: The Early Experience, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985, 55). Rebillard contends that although this was not the way most bishops explained the Christian life, it was the way many Christians lived it.

Because different “identities” could be activated or given priority in response to social contexts, Rebillard urges historians of early Christianity to avoid assuming that all Christians followed (or at least thought they ought to follow) the same practices, specified by commonly held principles or beliefs (3–5). He cautions that the ancient actors might not have regarded themselves as failures or sinners when they deviated from “approved” practices. Researchers should attend to what persons who self-identified as Christians actually did or thought they should do rather than what their leaders taught and approved. In the (usual) unavailability of evidence for individual practice, historians should not assume group conformity to the documented official teaching.

The challenge of his study, as the author recognizes, lies in finding any evidence of individual intention. Attempts to define and enforce standard behaviors are evidenced in the surviving literature; the actual practice of individuals in managing multiple and even conflicting roles is not. To his credit, Rebillard attempts a series of case studies.

The analysis begins with the writings of Tertullian, in particular, his arguments in De spectaculis, De cultu feminarum, and De idolatria. Specifying practices that consistently would identify Christians to one another and to outsiders was a contentious business. In his disputes, he sometimes witnessed to agreed practices in passing: the greeting kiss, the gesture of tracing a cross (invisibly) on the forehead, and giving alms to outsiders as well as insiders. Others were mentioned as arguments for disputed practices, or when they were challenged—such as the permanent exclusion of adulterers. Conflict would indicate that at least some Christians refused a practice, considering it wrong or unnecessary. The arguments Tertullian advances and objections he answers might reflect the attitudes of his target audience but can be credited with certainty only to himself. Still, he, and perhaps others, seem to have recognized at least two guiding principles in judging whether practices were mandatory: the witness of Scripture and the necessity of continuing to live within the Roman economy. Even that agreement, however, would reflect a view that church membership might be used by his interlocutors as a standard for governing the activation of their other identities, contrary to the Brubaker hypothesis of their independence.

State persecution tested guiding commitments and provoked a variety of responses, as Rebillard shows in his second chapter. Tertullian reported that Christians developed clever compromises, which he understood as attempts to meet the state’s demand without asserting or denying their Christian status. Cyprian’s correspondence indicates that during the Decian persecution many Christians voluntarily complied while others devised methods of avoiding the test. Rebillard suggests that the lapsed regarded the sacrificial ritual as a civil action that was irrelevant to their religious identity (50–51). Such an attitude, however, is not well evidenced in...